Behavioral Interviewing

Most of you have already heard about Behavioral Interviewing. (Actually, the method is called Behavior Description Interviewing.) But, do really you know what it is and how you can prepare the very best response?

In behavioral interviewing, the interviewer asks you to describe a past situation in detail to determine how you behaved. Then they probe for specific details so they understand your past behavior patterns. They’re looking to see if you’ve behaved in the past like their top-performers.

Behavioral interviewing uses the premise that past behavior is a reliable predictor of future performance. It is believed that the most recent and longstanding behaviors have the greatest predictive power.

Here’s what typical behavioral interviewing questions sound like:

Tell me about …

Describe a time when …

What was the most …, the least …, the toughest …, the worst …

During your response, the interview probes for details about your behavior:

what you did

what you said

how you and others reacted

So, here’s the key to responding to behavioral interviewing. Tell stories of your past experience with key details. There’s a specific formula for responding to this type of interviewing so you limit the interviewer’s probing questions and maintain control over your response. We give you the formula in our free newsletter article: Stories Interviewers Will Remember.